wrenb | Funniest, snarkiest restaurant review ever!

There I was peacefully reading a Times article that my dad sent me, when I clicked on another article from the Food section. It is the snarkiest, funniest restaurant review I've ever seen. I was just going to leave you guys a link, but I feel compelled to include a couple of prime quotations. The reviewer, AA Gill, wrote about a trip to the Isle of Man and then reviewed a trendy London restaurant. No, these don't go together except that he didn't enjoy either of them.

I love this observation, especially the juxtaposition of Celts and Yiddish:

Only the Celts put knick-knacks in windows for the kitschification of strangers. In fact, almost all Celtic culture seems to have revolved around decorative tchotchke. I like to think of them, all woaded up like the Blue Man Group without the jokes, sitting around fire pits eating charred stoat with acorn stuffing, quaffing horns of mud ale, telling sagas of paternity that sound like the Yellow Pages with stabbing, but surrounded by nests of occasional tables and welsh dressers boasting their best china and their collections of ornamental thimbles, pottery frogs, glass fawns and carved shepherds with big eyes. The spirit of the Celts still whispers through the people of Man like a mystical Oxfam shop.

On to the restaurant:

The restaurant is dark, but not dark enough.
. . .
I opted for a mozzarella, beetroot and avocado salad. I expect the cheese was actually burrata; if it wasn’t, something really unpleasant had been done to the buffalo. Next, I ordered penne with prawns. I ordered it, but I didn’t eat it. The pasta was glutinous Barbie legs cut off at the knee. The tight, hard curls of prawn might have been Pinocchio’s testicles. And it was all sluiced in a bath of tomato acid, and served on a plate that was so hot, it could have fried an egg.
. . .
The service was a flirty-eyed Italian boy who kept murmuring, “Good choice. Very nice. Oh, yes”, as if buying lingerie. As we left, a manager asked if everything was all right: “I couldn’t help noticing that you left a lot of your main course.” Not a lot – all of it. And why couldn’t you have noticed before it got to the table? I smiled. The prices are immaterial, because you’re never going to eat here.